In addition to his four-year-old son, N was raising the three children of his late younger sister. His sister's husband died in the war in northern China. Of course, N and his wife took in the three orphans and loved them like their own children. His wife told me N tends to spoil them too much. Of the three orphans, the oldest son is attending a technical school in Aomori. Every Saturday, he rides the bus seventeen miles from Aomori, walks the rest of the way home to Kanita, and gets home around midnight. "Uncle, Uncle," he calls out as he knocks on the door at the entryway.
N leaps from his bed to open the door and feverishly hugs the boy's shoulders. He only asks, "You walked the whole way? You walked?" His wife scolds him haphazardly and issues a quick succession of orders. "Here, have him drink some sugared hot water. Toast a rice cake, and warm up the noodles." While his wife remarks on how tired the child must be, "What?! What?" he says while waving his fist at her. During this quirky fight, their nephew explodes into laughter as does N while waving his fist, and his wife joins in. The matter is confused and remains unsettled. I felt this anecdote reveals a part of N's personality.
"Well, life has its ups and downs. Life goes on," I said. Thinking about my fate, too, I was touched. I envisioned the lonely figure of this good-natured friend alone in a corner of the factory weaving straw mats using an unfamiliar technique. I love this friend.
When we finished our respective work that night, we drank beer and talked about the crop failures in our province. N was a member of the Aomori Prefecture Local History Study Group and had quite a few documents about the history of this prefecture.
"Here's what has happened," said N and opened a book to show me. The following pages list an ominous table entitled The Chronological Table of Crop Failures in Aomori.
Genna year 1Severe failure
Genna year 2Severe failure
Kan'ei year 17Severe failure
Kan'ei year 18Severe failure
Kan'ei year 19Minor failure
Meireki year 2Minor failure
Kanbun year 6Minor failure
Kanbun year 11Minor failure
Enpo year 2Minor failure
Enpo year 3 Minor failure
Enpo year 7Minor failure
Tenwa year 1Severe failure
Jokyo year 1Minor failure
Genroku year 5Severe failure
Genroku year 7Severe failure
Genroku year 8Severe failure
Genroku year 9Minor failure
Genroku year 15Moderate failure
Hoei year 2Minor failure
Hoei year 3Minor failure
Hoei year 4Severe failure
Kyoho year 1Minor failure
Kyoho year 5Minor failure
Genbun year 2Minor failure
Genbun year 5Minor failure
Enkyo year 2Severe failure
Enkyo year 4Minor failure
Kan'en year 2Severe failure
Horeki year 5Severe failure
Meiwa year 4Minor failure
An'ei year 5Moderate failure
Tenmei year 2Severe failure
Tenmei year 3Severe failure
Tenmei year 6Severe failure
Tenmei year 7Moderate failure
Kansei year 1Minor failure
Kansei year 5Minor failure
Kansei year 11Minor failure
Bunka year 10Minor failure
Tenpo year 3Moderate failure
Tenpo year 4Severe failure
Tenpo year 6Severe failure
Tenpo year 7Severe failure
Tenpo year 8Minor failure
Tenpo year 9Severe failure
Tenpo year 10Minor failure
Keio year 2Minor failure
Meiji year 2Minor failure
Meiji year 6Minor failure
Meiji year 22Minor failure
Meiji year 24Minor failure
Meiji year 30Minor failure
Meiji year 35Severe failure
Meiji year 38Severe failure
Taisho year 2Minor failure
Showa year 6Minor failure
Showa year 9Minor failure
Showa year 10Minor failure
Showa year 15Moderate failure
This chronology would give anyone pause even if they were not from Tsugaru. Over the three hundred and thirty years from the first year of the Genna era, the summer campaign in the Siege of Osaka and the downfall of the Toyotomi until today, there have been about sixty crop failures. That comes to a crop failure every five years. Then N opened another book to show me. It said:
The following year, Tenpo year 4, easterly winds blew in beginning on the auspicious first day of spring until the Girls' Day festival in March, but the accumulated snow had not disappeared and sleds were used by the farmers. At the height of May, the seedlings grew a little in clusters and should have blossomed in stages by that time of year, and planting finally began under these conditions.
However, easterly winds blew violently over several days. After the hottest days of June came, billowy, dense clouds and fine, clear days were rarely seen…the cold grew every day and quilted clothes were worn again. Evenings were particularly cold. Even by the time of the nighttime Nebuta festival in July, no mosquitoes were heard on the roads. Few of them were heard inside the houses, and the use of mosquito nets was rare like the voices of locusts. (Author's note: Around the time of the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the brilliantly colored, giant lanterns in the forms of warriors or the rivalrous dragon and tiger are loaded onto carts and pulled. Young people dressed in costumes dance and parade down the streets in one of Tsugaru's annual events. The giant lanterns from different towns always bump into each other, and fights break out. Large lanterns with the themes of Sakanoue no Tamuramaro and the Conquest of Emishi are paraded. One story says the Emishi people in the mountains were lured out and annihilated, but the story has little credence. Not only Tsugaru, similar customs are found in other parts of Tohoku. Would it be a mistake to think of floats for summer festivals in Tohoku?)
The hot weather began around July 6, and people wore unlined kimonos before the Bon Festival. The popular dances of the Bon Festival livened up around the thirteenth when the ears have appeared on most of the grains of early-ripening rice. Around the fifteenth and the sixteenth, a band of bright, white sunlight resembled a mirror at night. At midnight on the seventeenth, the dancers scattered and the crowds on the streets thinned. With the gradual arrival of dawn, an unexpected
